IMAGINOS
It begins, as many mythos will, around a fireplace, a tale unfolding fifty-six years ago with all dreamscape intact; sense and nonsense, a parable of our placement in an uncomprehending universe. Listening are two members of a band that will become Blue Oyster Cult, a mise-en-scene yet to be written. The storyteller is Sandy Pearlman, weaving the tapestry of Imaginos from the tangled web of his own imaginos: the metallic resonance of rock, arcane philosophy and paranormal phenomena, how energy flows through power tube and alien ethos, history as revelation. Now the last of the triangulate is unsealed.
Whether artistic creation - the heroic figure of Imaginos buffeted by the winds of history and damnation and supernatural manipulation - or artists themselves, struggling to move forward in the midst of an unforgiving music business, not to mention band wear-and-tear, the limitations of sonic mediums, and the will to power undertaken to persevere on the path to absolution, such a prolonged pilgrimage requires utter belief in one’s messianic endgame. When you look in a mirror, all you see is yourself. The ultimate megalomania. If Imaginos the character will have such a hard time comprehending and achieving his destiny, why should the work devoted to him have it any easier?
Albert Bouchard has shepherded the concept of Imaginos through its many incarnations over the years, trying to transliterate Sandy’s feverish visions into audiophilic resonance. That Sandy is not here to feel long-awaited culmination is perhaps the greatest irony of this epic journey through the invisibility of conspiracy, the shape-shifting and eternal light that is Desdinova. But legend lives on, as will tales told ‘round the fire, of when Man still walked the Earth, and the carnage had yet to begin.
LENNY KAYE.
(Then came the last days of) May 2023